Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Are you feeling overworked and overscheduled in our
multi-tasking world? Have you gotten to
the point where “multi-tasking” is not a positive term? Writer Tony Schwartz describes this situation
in a recent Harvard Business Review blog network article, “The Magic of Doing
One Thing at a Time”.

“Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling
overwhelmed or burned out at work?” he questions. “It's not just the number of hours we're
working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too
many things at the same time.”

With great perception Schwartz notes, “What we've lost, above all,
are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Technology has blurred them
beyond recognition. Wherever we go, our work follows us, on our digital
devices, ever insistent and intrusive. It's like an itch we can't resist
scratching, even though scratching invariably makes it worse.”

But there’s even greater effect on our human resources. Norris goes on to point out, “But most
insidiously, it's because if you're always doing something, you're relentlessly
burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so
you have less available with every passing hour.”

So what can we do? And what
steps can our organizations take to support higher productivity and more
innovative thinking? Norris suggests
three policies worth promoting:

· Do the most important
thing first in the morning, preferably without
interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If
possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing
earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have
a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive
you'll be. When you're done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

·Establish regular,
scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don't, you'll constantly succumb to the
tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this
activity — preferably one that's relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

·Take real and regular
vacations. Real means that when
you're off, you're truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a
year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend.
The research strongly suggests that you'll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

What’s the lesson learned?
It’s to engage in work by being fully engaged for defined periods of
time. And when one is renewing one’s
energy, really renew. Try doing one
thing at a time!

Monday, May 14, 2012

As your
organization’s chief executive, you probably think you know what’s
important—what’s Job One.And you
probably do.But do you know what may
just as important as Job One?“Call it
Job One-B”, write authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer.In their article, “How Leaders Kill Meaning
at Work”, published in a recent McKinsey Quarterly edition, the authors suggest
that “enabling the ongoing engagement and everyday progress of the people in
the trenches of your organization…” is a key to helping your staff to make
progress in meaningful work.This, they
say, is the single most important event that can deeply engage people in their
jobs.

The two
authors point out that the first fundamental requirement for employee job
satisfactions is “that the work be meaningful to the people doing it”.They go on to note that people are more
creative, productive, committed and collegial in their jobs when they have
positive inner work lives.This
positively affects the bottom line of the organization as well.

A sense
of purpose in the work and consistent action to reinforce it, “has to come from
the top”, not just frontline supervisors, Amabile and Kramer write.They describe four traps that lie in wait for
senior executives; traps that drain the meaning from the work of the people in
their organizations.

Mediocrity Signals:Most
non-profit organizations have a lofty purpose and mission that aspires to
greatness.But are you inadvertently
signaling the opposite through your words and actions?Despite executive rhetoric about being
innovative and “the gold standard”, is your organization consumed with being
ordinary?Does your staff feel they are
doing mediocre work for mediocre reasons?

Strategic “Attention Deficit
Disorder”:Monitoring an organization’s external
environment in order to make strategic moves is a common trait of senior
executives.Thinking about where the
organization should go next is an important responsibility.But does your organization start and abandon
initiatives so frequently that employees neither understand the initiatives,
nor have sufficient time for execution to determine whether the initiatives are
working?Does each year bring in a new
themed strategy?

Corporate
Keystone Kops:Early silent film movies
depicted the Keystone Kops, who were fictional policemen so incompetent that
they ran around in circles, mistakenly bashed one another and fumbled one case
after another.Many senior executives
who think everything is running smoothly in their organizations may be
completely unaware that they preside over their own version of the Keystone
Kops.When coordination and support are
absent within an organization, people may lose their sense of purpose and stop
believing that they can produce something of high quality.

Misbegotten “Big, Hairy,
Audacious Goals”:Management researchers Jim Collins and Jerry
Porras have written of the value to organizations of developing “big, hairy,
audacious goals (BHAG), as a bold strategic vision statement which has powerful
emotional appeal.It’s possible,
however, that the BHAGs are grandiose, containing little relevance or meaning
for people in the trenches.They can be
so extreme as to seem unattainable and so vague as to seem pointless.The result may be rising employee cynicism
and plummeting productivity.

The
writers conclude their article by noting, “As an executive, you are in a better
position than anyone to identify and articulate the higher purpose of what
people do within your organization.Make
that purpose real, support its achievement through consistent everyday actions,
and you will create the meaning that motivates people toward greatness.Along the way, you may find greater meaning
in your own work as a leader.”

Monday, May 7, 2012

It’s
early in 2012—spring is officially here and our spirits are uplifted.So what will the coming year hold for
nonprofits?Is there good news or
not-so-good news ahead?“5 Nonprofit
Trends to Watch in 2012”, authored by Nell Edgington on http://www.socialvelocity.net/blog/
offers the following annual predictions which she defines as “probably a bit
more wishful thinking than actual predictions”:

·More Open, Engaging Organizations:Smart
nonprofits are getting better at engaging armies of supporters. In order to do
that, they have to cede some control. Nonprofits that can allow volunteers,
donors and advocates to engage their friends in their own way will unleash a growing army of support for their organizations.

·Smarter Boards:I
am an endless optimist when it comes to nonprofit boards of directors. Boards
are, for the most part, dysfunctional, but I believe that they are getting
smarter and more effective. I think boards will start asking more and better questions, increasingly put
themselves to their highest and best use, focus more on strategic issues as
opposed to day-to-day tasks, empower their staff leadership to take the
organization in more innovative directions, and start putting their money (and their networks) where their
mouth is.

·More Honest Communication between
Nonprofits and Their Donors:Oh yes, I do, I do believe it.
The nonprofit sector’s proclivity to endlessly beat around the bush, tell
donors what they want to hear, and sugar-coat the truth will start to wane in
the New Year. Because the reality is that a severely under-resourced nonprofit
sector is the new normal. That truth is harder and harder to hide.
Nonprofits need more money for infrastructure, more and better staff, and
technology. And they need their donors to step up to the plate and fund it.

·More Strategic Approaches to Solving
Social Problems:It’s increasingly meaningless for
nonprofits to talk about the “good work” they do. In order to attract donors,
nonprofits must be able to articulate what they do and how it results in
change. This necessitates an overall strategic approach to their work. From creating a theory of change, to developing on a comprehensive strategy, to raising the money required to
execute on that strategy, to aligning money and mission, to evaluating their efforts, to translating their evaluation into a compelling story,
nonprofits have to get more strategic. Those organizations that take a step
back and create, and fully integrate their organization into, a long-term plan
will be much more successful and sustainable.

· More
Financed Nonprofits:As part of this more strategic approach, nonprofits
will (must) move towards a broader, more strategic approach to funding their
work. They will realize that the hamster wheel of chasing receding dollars in a
scattered approach just isn’t going to cut it anymore. As the fundamental
economic restructuring that we are currently experiencing continues, nonprofits must create a financial
model for their work. The
financial status quo just will no longer work in the nonprofit sector.

Edgington concludes by saying, “I’m not a fortune teller, but I am an
optimist. I have tremendous hope for our great nonprofit sector. We may be in
the depths of an on-going, structurally transformative recession, but it in no
way is the death knell for the nonprofit sector. It is simply an opportunity
for nonprofits to get smarter, more honest, more open, more strategic, and more
sustainable. And that’s exciting.”

That is exciting, don’t you agree?Do
you and your organization see opportunities ahead?Will your organization be moving in any of
these directions in 2012?

About Me

For health, education, workforce, finance and other non profit and public service organizations that want to leverage resources and strategically plan for U.S. or international market expansion.
Plexus Consulting Group® provides a broad-range of consulting and management services to not-for-profit and public service sectors. We help clients overcome challenge, achieve excellence, and maintain success.
The Plexus team of multilingual, multitalented professionals align themselves primarily among lines of industry specialization, including Globalization, Education, Workforce Development, Healthcare, and Financial Services.